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Next SurfaceRT To Come With Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, LTE
recoiledsnake writes "Following up on our previous discussion of Microsoft selling discounted SurfaceRT tablets to schools (which fueled speculation about the future of Surface RT), Bloomberg is now reporting that Microsoft is fast at work on the next Surface RT which will replace the current Tegra 3 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip which has stellar benchmarks against the likes of the upcoming Tegra 4, Apple A6X, and Exynos processors, especially in the GPU and graphics department. Since the SoC comes with 3g/LTE, this might be the first Surface to support integrated cellular data. There are also indications that there could be an 8" version, and that the new versions might be revealed alongside the Windows 8.1 preview bits at the upcoming BUILD conference, starting on June 26."
Bloomberg is now reporting that Microsoft is fast at work on the next Surface RT which will replace the current Tegra 3 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip
Will they also replace Windows RT with Windows? Because it seems awfully like they replaced Windows with new Folger's Crystals, and you can taste the difference.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Here ladies and gentlemen, we have a Reputation Manager hard at work.
High user number, low post count, all of which praise MS in some way.
The check's in the post.
Even though increased hardware performance like computing power, features and increased battery life certainly won't hurt, performance isn't really the problem with Windows RT tablets now is it?
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
Until and unless they change "Windows" RT so that it lets non-Microsoft applications run on the desktop, no one cares. People aren't writing applications for Metro and aren't going to start. If they opened up the desktop, then at least many existing programs would work with just a recompile.
Why are the EU antitrust authorities letting them get away with this, anyway? (I'd ask the same about the US, but for all intents and purposes we don't *have* antitrust authorities.)
Do we have to go through the the same BS we went through when Windows 8 was in consumer preview. Months of, "I've used Windows 8 since Developer preview, and it's just swell. My five year old loves... blah... blah... blah...".
./, we're the techies that decide how good a product is. Windows 8 is a failure, no one's buying your BS here, find a local news paper to post in.
This is
Possible Microsoft shill detected.
Microsoft shill confirmed.
Microsoft FUD detected, presenting false data as facts.
More Microsoft FUD detected.
Obvious shill is totally obvious.
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Microsoft really gets a a hard time trying to change anything. When Apple dropped OS9 support when moving to OSX, or when they dropped PowerPC support moving to X86, or when they created a tablet that wasn't compatible with their desktop operating system, nobody did this much complaining. But everytime MS tries to do anything that changes anything in anyway people say they are making bad decisions. ARM will have to get a lot faster before they can run real Windows and all the standard Windows applications on it. I really think the only major failings of their Surface line is that it's a little to expensive for what it is. Surface RT would be nice if the price was a little closer to the Nexus 7 than it is to the iPad, and their Surface Pro should be a little close in price to the iPad. But I think they got the basic idea and concept right.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This is such good news! All the complaints about 'Surface RT' that I've heard so far have centered on how the Tegra3 is too slow, and doesn't have enough LTE. Nothing about how the hilariously perfunctory not-quite-office version of office is deeply touch-unfriendly, or being locked into Microsoft's walled garden store, or the relatively tiny application library. This should fix everything!
Apple fanboys and consoles fanboys can be that excited, but they still wouldn't word it in that fashion.
"I think it's great they are getting these in stores!" sounds like the point of view of the seller, not the buyer.
As an example, a PS4 fanboy would say something like "I'll camp on the sidewalk for days if I have to, but I'm getting one on launch day! Xbox sucks!!1".
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The problem is the name. Why call it "Windows-whatever" if it can't run Windows applications?
I would have called the OS "Doors". The marketing department would have a field day with this. "Open new Doors to exciting possibilities" and other bullshit.
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O my troll,
You wish to deprecate me,
But you strengthen me by validating my comments,
You let me know that I interfere with your shilling
I am renewed in thee.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And all 15 of the people that bought, and kept, their Surface RT tablets are now going to be pissed at the 6 month product lifecycle.
With the deep discounts that Microsoft is giving on these things, they're getting dangerously close to "we can't even give them away."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The Good: RT gets us into ARM and it leaves behind a ton of baggage that has hindered good development on MS platforms.
The Bad: Microsoft can't market their way out of a wet paper sack. Looking at the commercials all I can tell is there's a snap on keyboard and people in Washington State like to dance. Moreover, even the BlackBerry Tablet had a bigger release profile and certainly better availability in stores. All of this lead to very few apps and developers that threw their lot in with RT early on getting burned.
The Ugly: Do a Pro Tablet, or do a RT tablet. Don't do both. Consumers have no idea what the difference is. The ones that bought an RT tablet feel pretty underwhelmed by the app availability.
The baffling thing is that RT could be alright. It could run re-compiled apps from anyone. Legacy software would be a problem, but anything actively developed would be ported with little effort. That would rock! There is actually a lot of really useful OSS software for windows. .. But you can't do this. You can, if you root the device. But it's unsupported.
Instead, MS wants you to buy software only through their app store. Just like apple devices. Trouble is, there is already a very active and very large development community for apple. Why would I buy an RT pad over an ipad?
The answer is there isn't. And there isn't for anyone else either. Thats why nobody is buying them. You can't beat the ipad by being the same as it. Nobody is better at being apple, than apple. You have to be better, or there is no reason to switch.
Microsoft really gets a a hard time trying to change anything. When Apple dropped OS9 support when moving to OSX, or when they dropped PowerPC support moving to X86, or when they created a tablet that wasn't compatible with their desktop operating system, nobody did this much complaining.
When Apple dropped Mac OS 9 it was after around five years of providing the ability to run OS 9 applications via the 'Classic Environment' emulation layer on OS X 10.0 through to 10.4. When they dropped Power PC support you could continue to run PPC OS X applications on Intel OS X via Rosetta for around six years (10.4 through to 10.6). Although such architecture changes were not seamless there were quite lengthy transitional phases to lessen the impact on end users and developers.
When Apple created the iPad it was specifically designed for the Apple ecosystem to work along side existing products. The concept of iOS being 'incompatible' with OS X does not apply because they power two complimentary products families running on distinctly different hardware platforms, used for distinctly different purposes. Whether you love or hate Apple you cannot accuse them of forcing rapid change on their customers as Microsoft has done with Surface RT/Win8/Metro/Windows store and it's associated limitations, incompatibilities, inconveniences and plain old butt-ugliness.
The silly thing is, aside from literally a single flag in the kernel*, it *is* just a simple recompile of Win8. Dig into that "jailbreak" on XDA-Devs, and you'll see it really is just a single value that needs to be changed. Microsoft really should have made a way for users to do that themselves. I can understand the value to some people of having a very locked-down system where all third-party code runs in a sandbox, but sometimes I want to run third-party code that *isn't* going to run in a sandbox, dammit!
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...